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Topic: Islam: From Tradition to Terror (Read 3338 times)

Has anyone else read Stephen Schwartz, "The Two Faces of Islam; The House of Saud from Tradition to Terror"?

I find it most informative and answers most of the questions I've struggle with trying to discern how much of Islam does seem to be a religion of peace while much of it seems to be a religion of terror and war. The Saudi's and their missionaries the Wahhabis have been terrorizing the traditional Muslims for decades just as they have been at the heart of the most viscious attacks on Israel and the West. They are the power behind the Taliban and Al Qaida. They are the terrorist movement in Chechnya. They are the inspiration for the Baathists and are the fomentors of the continued war in Kashmire.

You won't learn this from the naive and ideological Western press...but there you have it.

I now understand why there is such a divergence of opinion concerning just what Islam is even among those who are Muslim.

I am of course against Islamic extremism, don't believe Islam to be a religion of peace, and dislike the T---s. But when it comes to Israel vs. Palestine, I am 99% pro-Palestinian, partly because I know so many Palestinian Christians who suffered under the Israeli regime, and partly because after reading up on the history I just couldn't support Israel's claims. I don't have a problem with Israel taking out Hamas but let's not lump Hamas and other Iranian-backed militant groups with Palestinian groups as one big "other". I'm not saying you did that Dan btw I am just saying let's not do that. I also believe Israel has a right to exist now that it has multi-generational members there (it wouldn't be fair to the young Israelis to be booted). But I think they need to get out of the Palestinian lands NOW.

In other words, I think we need to separate the issue of the evil that Islam did on Christianity from the Israeli-Palestinian thing which is more political.

A year or so ago I might have agreed with you. Perhaps you are right. We will soon see. The Israelis are building such a DMZ right now. I doubt that it will work. A Muslim student from Pakistan who was enrolled in my Comparative Religion class said, "The problem in many Muslim countries is that they lack people of character in them." I think he's right.

I doubt that a DMZ will make any difference. What is needed is an end to Wahhabism and to their backers the Saudis. America should at least stop by oil from Saudi Arabia and from any other country that supports and exports terror.

I find it strange that that Pakistani said that. Perhaps Pakistan, being almost all Muslim is now very different than India. When I was in India I much more trusted Muslims (with my life) than Hindus, who usually were comparively more dirty and more liable to cheat one. Muslims had strict standards of conduct and cleanliness that made being around them very pleasant. Of course, Indian muslims are the total opposite of wahabbi fanatics, and most Indian Muslims look down on that kind of Islam (they are usually Shia, Ismaelis, Sufis, or generally more secular).

Tom,

I used to think that way but my dad who is generally in the middle between the two groups (versus my previously stated pro-Palestinian line) says he thinks that creating a wall would only lead to further isolation and ghetto feelings for the Palestinians; plus, how would the Christian palestinians get to the Holy Sites in Israeli occupied Jerusalem, and how would the Christian Israelis get into the sites in Palestinian-occupied territories. Not to mention the poor Armenians who generally get screwed by everyone.

plus, how would the Christian palestinians get to the Holy Sites in Israeli occupied Jerusalem, and how would the Christian Israelis get into the sites in Palestinian-occupied territories.

Have the UN go in (and of course that will mean the bloodshed of more American and British young men and women, 'cause Lord know that no other countries will have the ba**s to step up to the plate) and make Jerusalem an open city occupied by a multinational peacekeeping force. Impose borders and mine both sides. Any insurrection should be put down with prejudice.

I am sick to death of this region and the way it has a hand on the neck of the world for the last 60 years. The way it is being used by criminals and murderers simply because it provides them a "cause" to kill for. Arafat is a terrorist and ALWAYS will be a terrorist. Just like many of the Isreali leaders have been.

This Palestinian thing is a joke. The Arabs don't give a damn about them and are only using them to get at Israel. Numerous times the Palestinians have attempted to settle in other middle eastern countries (Lebenon, Jordan) and have always eventually been kicked out of them.

As we all know, this is exactly what happened to the Jews throughout history. So the "powers that be" created a Jewish Homeland. And now WE and our childrens children will have to pay for the "sins of the fathers" until SOMEONE solves the problem!

So it is up to the UN to take a part of Isreal and a part of some other countries and MAKE a state for the Palestinians. And tell Israel - this was done for YOUR people and now we are doing it for the Palestinian people.

Peace in Israel? Easy: dismantle the barbaric colonizing system that is ruled by people who think in such ways as to say the following:

1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001

2. "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, the more they want" Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

3. " [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

4. "The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." "Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

5. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

6. "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

8. "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

9. David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

9a. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."

10. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

11. "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

12. "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.

13. "We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

15. "We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben- Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

16. "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"

17. "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

18. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'" Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

19. Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas.

20. "There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.

21. "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

22. "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism,colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

23. "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

During the protests against the war on Iraq, I took a picture of a Hasidic Jew holding a Palastinian flag. He let me take his picture, but I don't have it right now, have to go home & find the cd with it on it. Will hopefully post it tomorrow, but as I just moved Sunday & haven't unpacked yet, it might be a few days.Ania

Logged

Now where were we? Oh yeah - the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didnÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

As far as Israel and the Palestinians...since the PLO wants to push Israel into the sea and apparently some in Israel wish to push the Palestinians into the desert following Jordan's example of a few years ago, I wonder if Christianity has an answer for these unforgiving people? Also, I wonder if Catholics and Orthodox finally stopped their squabbling if some of these seeminingly intractable problems might not seem so difficult?

But...this hasn't much to do with Hamas, the Wahhabists, and the house of Saud.

I suppose it's pretty "courage" to protest zionism when one is safely ensconced in Washington DC. Why don't we pack all the Jews on some rockets and blast them off to outer space. Then, at least then would not be hunted down. They could die in peace.

I don't know the right answer but it is pretty frustrating to read all the whining about the poor Muslims who regularly kill children.

I don't know the right answer but it is pretty frustrating to read all the whining about the poor Muslims who regularly kill children.

Dan Lauffer

Dan,

It's precisely this sentiment that frustrates me. What about the children that die every time the Israelis send missles into crowded marketplaces to try and blow up members of various terror groups? Or what of the familes displaced by Jewish "settlers"? I would encourage you to view the video Jerusalem: Occupation Set in Stone? where you will not only see a Muslim woman with 13 children kicked out on the street, but you will also see a Greek Orthodox Church destroyed by the Israelis.

Yes, bombings happen by Muslims. This is tragic, inexcusable, etc. BUT to call others' complaints about this "whining for Muslims who kill children" is an offensive sentiment because it either insinuates that all Palestinians are collectively guilty for the actions of a few homicide bombers. NO! It's not just the guilty who suffer due to the Israeli occupation and it's not just Muslims! I talked frequently with Melkites and Orthodox who were devestated by the Israeli forces, and let us not forget the incident in 1967 where Archbishop Zoghby's two villages in his diocese were forcibly destroyed--two CHRISTIAN villages--by the Israelis.

It's not a Muslim thing and it's not a "well the Israelis are just defeding themselves" thing. If the Israelis want to send assasins to kill Hamas leaders (supported by Iran, btw) then FINE do it. But retaliating by destroying other peoples' homes (if you happen to live in the same apartment building as a terrorist, too bad, because they will destroy your whole building as retaliation) is satanic and evil. I mean, really, if I lived in an apartment and the Israelis came and blew it up because a terrorist lived down the hall I would be liable to do something crazy too!!

Dear brother. I feel terrible about the continued fighting between Israel and the Palestinians. Yet that has little to do with what I've posted. When Christians finally look to an answer for Israel perhaps one will be found. I'm not interested in the endless arguments over who is to blame for this conflict, at least not in this post.

What does interest me, and I wish it interested others, is the rise of the Wahhabis which is the cause of the extreme violence in much of the world today. Schwartz has addressed the issue as an attempt by the Wahhabists with the complicity of the Saudis to take over the ummah.

If you wish to start another thread on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict please do so. Could you comment on the subject of this thread, please.

I have a greater respect for Iran than I do for Saudi Arabia. I wish I had better answers for Israel and Palestine. It is a crucial question. The Palestinian Christians are caught in a political nut cracker. It is very sad.

The world's greatest political enemy is found not in Iraq, though that's close because of their connection to the Wahhabists, but in Saudi Arabia.

Schwartz thinks that the kingdom will soon destroy itself. I don't know.

I read the book Persian Pilgrimages (a travel account) and I too have greater respect for them than SA. In fact, I have respect for Iran period. But anyway, SA is full of wackos and I agree with you that the Wahabbis are fanatics.